


The Game Changer

by thelongcon (rainer76)



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Bottom Rick, M/M, Rickyl, Top Daryl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 11:34:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4827677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/thelongcon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're sheltered in this part of Alexandria, no one is looking, no one cares.  Rick looks rumpled, ruptured open, there's a touch of whimsy to his voice when he confesses: "I could drift here."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Game Changer

He feels the shove as a series of explosions; this violent intent orchestrated by these blunt hands.  He means it as a detonation, blasting through rock, trying to destabilize the shored up cliffs and bring Daryl to his level; scruff with Rick in the crater dust; all of his words have gone arid, dry with fear. His lips, tongue, move without sound.  Once, long ago, talking was Rick's first resort, he could talk himself hoarse: before Joe, the Governor, before Lori and a relationship framed by prison bars.  But in the interim Rick has learned this: words don't mean shit.  Rick's speech has gone spare because of it - littered with ultimatums or gilded by threat - words lost their ingenuity long since, so he shoves Daryl,  _hard._

One palm to the centre of Daryl's chest, fingers skidding against hair, rank with sweat.

This close, eye to eye, he sees those explosions ignite, how they rock through Daryl's frame and alter his stance.  And he thinks  _fuck_.  Rick thinks,  _don't screw this up._  It’s a hopeless plea, because on many levels Rick already _has_ screwed it up.  This is a dialect Daryl has known since childhood, which Rick learnt as an adult, reluctantly, and by halting passages.

He hasn't been this scared since the early days, and wallah, the early days are back with a vengeance, Morgan in one ear and this need to put Daryl in his place burning through Rick’s ribcage, sparking through his hands.  Rick can't pull a gun anymore and have it mean anything – not with Daryl on the opposite end – but he wants too.  God’s truth he wants to, if it would make the other man stop for half a second.  “Fight,” Rick snarls, instead.  “Fucking fight.” Stand still, he means, talk to me, he implores.

 _“Lay off.”_  

Daryl swats his hand away like it’s an irritant. He dodges, the same way he’s been dodging Rick since they came to Alexandria.  Since Rick first put the uniform on, stiff and clean shaven, smelling like a daisy.  Since Daryl had given him the once over – incredulous - eying Rick from head to toe, before turning his face away.  “So you a cop again?”  It was the first time in a long while Rick couldn’t read his expression.  Or maybe he wasn’t paying attention. Heck, they all had their parts to play – Carol understood that – actors trying on roles in ill-fitting suits. He was the Sherriff – a steady guy – already smiling at Pete’s wife, plotting the takeover if need be. “Guess so,” he had replied, under the dim porch light, then added:  “We good?”  “Yeah…” a tempered pause.  “We’re good…”

Anything but.

You don’t hit someone who’s been blindly loyal. You don’t reward Daryl by shoving him, Daryl, who grew up never knowing anything else. Rick can feel his face pull into an ugly snarl, feel his muscles coil like a livewire.  Ready to snap.  His hands tighten into fists.  He’s always had Daryl at his side, so close you couldn’t slip a coin between them when things were rough, and now Rick feels his absence like a shell hole.  A pit he can’t leap across.

Rick resorts to a tactic Daryl has known right down to his broken bones, and watches Daryl’s eyes go incendiary when Rick shoves him hard, for a second time: one feint to the left and he’s in Rick’s face, torso to torso, his voice a guttural snarl. “Fucker, I will put you _down_ if you try that again.”

“You ain’t one of them.”  Rick spits.  Because this is _his_ group, his people, and Deanna and her kind are the second-class citizens now.  They ain’t trustworthy until they get their hands bloody and until then, and even after, Rick wouldn’t trade his own for any of Deanna’s people.  Except lately, Daryl spends more time with their ilk than his own. He spends his days outside of the gates, in the wild, and when he’s home he’s hard to catch, just as likely to be kipping on Aaron’s couch.  (Always Aaron’s house – never one of their own).  He hasn’t stayed close to Rick since they came to this place. He hasn’t changed his appearance or his clothes. He hasn’t play-acted a role or cared to try.  Daryl smells like grass and hot asphalt, like blood and sweet rot combined.  It’s heady.  It makes Rick’s head spin it’s so off. 

Daryl ain’t one of them, but he’s starting to feel less and less like one of Rick’s too.

“Oh that’s ripe, coming from you.”

Rick’s police uniform is stained with rustic blood, dried into the material.  His head aches, and he doesn’t know if it’s the unraveling fury inside of him or the blow Michonne struck. _Fight me for just_ **_once_.** He could whisper, _don’t fade out of my grasp_ , but Rick’s choking on words he can no longer say.  I need you, he revealed once, out loud and in front of everyone to witness, are you with me?   And he remembers the elation when Daryl nodded, the same way he can’t forget the bleeding wound when the archer walked away with Merle.  Bewildered and knocked senseless by an unexpected blow.

Words don’t mean shit, Rick has learnt, and he’s been gutted too many times to show his vulnerable places now.  He can’t talk in his own language, all of his clever words are gone, used up, but he can speak in Daryl’s, with hits designed to bruise.  “Are you fucking him?  Aaron? The three of you seem awfully cozy in that house.” 

And damn if he’d forgotten how viper quick Daryl could move.

The world explodes.  His vision goes white with agony.  His teeth click shut when his ass hits the dirt and Rick thinks, stunned, that Daryl just elbowed him in the face, quarters too close to punch. Tears flood his eyes, and with it, relief.  Desperate to keep it going, to keep Daryl within range, Rick kicks both feet out to bring the other man down.  Daryl obliges; with a knee to the pit of Rick’s belly, knocking the breath out of him, landing half on top and with his full weight behind.  Rick’s lungs compress - set alight as he struggles to breathe - he tries to curl upright except Daryl’s hands find his shoulders and press him flat.  Daryl hovers inches above, their face close together, sitting astride Rick comfortably. Eventually, Daryl notes: “If you’re trying to pull a Merle, you did a piss-poor job of it.”

“Get off.”

“Yeah,” Daryl breathes, he shuffles back until he’s settled in the cradle of Rick’s hips, watching him carefully.  “I don’t think so.”  His thumb swipes across Rick’s collar bone once, dragging against the police shirt.  He looks three quarters pissed and one part amused and Rick doesn’t know what to do with that expression so he looks away fast.  “I don’t recall asking if you were ever fucking Jesse…or Michonne…or anyone else for that matter.  It ain’t my business.  And I figure the only time someone _should_ ask that question – fucking or dating,” he muses, “is if you have an interest in the first place.” Rick glances up, adrenalin gone to poison in his heart, a trip to a double-time beat.  “Do you?  Wanna fuck me?  Cos’ otherwise, _officer_ , you have no business asking.” He can’t catch his breath; Rick’s still reeling on the earth, dirt at his fingertips and mouth agape. He wanted the contact; the immediate hurt, he wanted someone to touch him and didn't care how, but Rick went to the only person he knew who wouldn’t escalate it into a crime.  His safest harbor. Daryl’s smile turns savage, and Rick realizes with despair he can read beyond it, to a coded hurt. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

“Wait – what?” 

Rick thinks, dumbly, that he used to be better at this. He curls his hands around Daryl’s wrists, feels the press of his own shoulder-blades against the baked ground and the heat of Daryl’s palms against his chest.  He orchestrated the explosion, knew exactly which wires to cross, but Rick doesn’t recognize this alien landscape, and he hadn’t counted on the things he might unearth.

Fight for me please, because I feel like I’m slipping away, and Daryl’s always been his anchor. 

Once upon a time, Rick used to talk a hell of a lot more, he knew all the proper things to say, but he’s lost the cadence, the honest belief in words, disused, the meaning of them has withered away.  He clutches Daryl, hands to wrists, both thighs up with his booted feet to the ground, an ark to float upon.

“Huh,” Daryl says.  "You're after something…you don't even know what you want."  He leans back, lower spine propped by Rick’s knees, and he could deny it, Rick supposes, because he wants his people safe.  He wants them close by, he wants Daryl's attention redirected and doesn't know how to ask.  Bright eyed, Daryl looks down the length of Rick’s torso. “Don’t you throw me overboard again,” he warns. 

The uniform never fitted Rick well, white picket fence, a two storey house, Carl and Judith, a question mark where Lori used to be, a trite dream of yesteryear that Rick had toyed with, caught a glimpse of every time he caught sight of Jesse.  And it wasn’t real, it was a part to play, but Daryl’s never had the patience for two-faced deceit.  He is as he is and Rick knows exactly why Aaron liked him.  He knows why Daryl liked Aaron, too.  Have to admire that kind of bravery, the honesty to be who you are at the very core and just live it.  “You go stark raving mad every time you’re behind four walls,” Daryl adds, but his expression has softened, his body curves down.  He wiggles one wrist free, trails it across the Sherriff’s insignia, over buttons and heads south.  “You scare the shit out of them folk.  They don't know your worth…they don't know how steady you are out in the wild, but I do.”  Daryl slips the shirt undone, one button at a time.  “Your sheep’s clothing don’t fit so well here, Rick.”

It’s a ricochet, having his name in Daryl’s mouth. He feels safe, boxed in by thighs, by hard muscle, _contained,_ but he’s not relaxed, Rick’s trembling in the heat and he thinks, dimly, that once upon a time Daryl _never_ talked this much.

 

***

“You want this?” Daryl asks.  “You gotta say what you want.” 

He finds the fly to Rick’s jeans, the gun-belt soon discarded, the button popped loose.  He finds warm skin and no underwear, and Daryl listens to the hitching breaths as Rick writhes and moans, splayed under him and heavy on his tongue.  Daryl sucks him soft, with shy flicks, he deep throats with a torturous hum, throat crammed full of dick and swallowing until the constrictions have Rick sobbing.  He plays him like a maestro, with every trick he's learnt, until Rick’s voice breaks free in a flood of words.  He begs so prettily, Daryl muses.

 _I need you,_ Rick says, wrecked and broken, scarred as an old wound.

He’s come already, his cock gone soft and small, but Daryl kitten licks him just to see the twitches skitter down Rick’s thighs, to feel his belly shake and stutter.  “Keep talking,” Daryl mutters, sotto voce, with his hair in his eyes.  “Keep talking to me."  And later:  "You ever shove me again I’ll - ”

\- Beat your ass down.

\- Fuck you until you forget everything else.  Morgan, Deanna, whatever assholes we’re fighting this week, I’ll fuck (love you) until there’s nothing left in your skull.

-I’ll sink, because I don’t need violence from you, too, not with everything else.  I don't need another Merle.  I’ll go under like a stone, a dead anchor.

-I’ll remind you who you are.

“No,” Rick interrupts.  “I won’t,” he promises fervently.  His fingers card though Daryl’s hair, rest under his chin to tug his face upward. His eyes are bright with belief. “Stay here with me.” They’re sheltered in this part of Alexandria, no one’s looking, no one really cares.  Rick looks rumpled, ruptured open, but there’s a touch of whimsy when he confesses. “I could drift here."

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a long time since I've written in this fandom; but yay, new season soon and I'm feeling that sense of glee
> 
> Apologies to anyone who has read it because a: I'm way out of practice,   
> and b: rough draft, unbeta-read, etc, etc, etc, so errors galore.


End file.
